But first, here’s how it works now. Associated Content’s writers create self-selected and assignment-based content. Most of what is produced is evergreen content, but there are also personal essays, product reviews, and the like. While some content is paid at scale or ‘upfront,’ Keane explained that various types of content are often valued individually, according to the form (text, video, etc.) and potential earnings.

Since monetization happens over the lifetime of an article, and articles are considered annuities for both Associated Content and the producers, potential earnings are determined by a number of factors, including Web search results and Ad Sense metrics.

…..

Prior to the sale, I had asked Keane about the potential for Associated Content to create local news. ‘Using the virtual assignment desk, we can activate any audience in any ZIP code,’ he responded. ‘So, then, we could potentially have someone follow the story of a plane crash. We can activate people in any community to create news stories if we’d like to do that. But that’s not our focus.’

I hope they let me work on some of the many exciting projects at Yahoo! Who needs a high rank at a small company in New York? I want to move to California and get stuck in traffic every day on the way to my midlevel engineering job where I sit in a cubicle all day and canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t make any product decisions while working on something nobody will ever see to manage regional ad clickthrough stats tracking.

# “Extensive” experience as the CEO of a public company. Before Microsoft acquired aQuantive for $6 billion, it was a public company (AQNT) with a $2.8 billion market cap and more than 2,000 employees.
# Media expertise. McAndrews certainly gained that helping running Microsoft’s digital side. One of aQuantive’s businesses was the ATLAS publishing platform, which helps publishers pick the right ads.
# Advertising expertise. aQuantive ran three advertising businesses, the ATLAS publishing platform, contextual ad business DRIVEpm and interactive ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish.
# Mergers and acquisitions experience. McAndrews actually knows how to finish a deal with Microsoft having sold aQuantive for $6 billion.
# Strategic skills. After Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, Microsft needed to answer. McAndrews made sure aQuantive was it, and for twice as much money.

Notice the thing that’s missing? Technology, that’s what. And it’s long been my pet prejudice that the problems Yahoo is having right now, and has been having for some time, come down to a problem with technical delivery. Yahoo doesn’t scale. Google does. That’s not because of the way it sells advertising, or the way it runs its offices, or the decisions it makes about mergers and acquisitions. It’s because of its technology. Every technology Google develops can roll out worldwide, immediately, in multiple languages and with reach into multiple markets. Hardly any of Yahoo’s products do that. And it’s a technical architecture and delivery problem, pure and simple. Put someone in there who doesn’t understand that, and they’ll get nowhere. Guaranteed.